Coast-to-Coast Comicdom: A Briffit in D.C.

Illustration by Scott White

It seemed like a great idea: I’ll drive cross-country, by myself, and stop at every major and minor city along the way to talk with comic book creators, fans, and retailers. I leave tomorrow. I no longer believe it’s a great idea.

Dallas Middaugh, my editor at Random House, called me on April 10 with “exciting news.” Turns out my latest graphic novel anthology, Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened, was nominated for an Eisner Award. Best Anthology. It was, indeed, “exciting news.” The Eisners are essentially the Oscars of comics and graphic novels. There’s a big shindig at San Diego ComiCon (aka Nerd Prom) complete with dinner, drinks, comic creators and publishers, press folk, and about three fans. From what I’ve heard, comic fans don’t like to sit in the back of an auditorium and watch the pros get smashed as the four-hour evening rolls on. I don’t know if that’s true or not, because I’ve never been to an Eisner ceremony before.

A page from "Quarantined", written by RJ and Jason Rodriguez, art by Seamus Heffernan, from Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened

The Eisner nod managed to get me off of the psycho-sexual bender I was on. I have no idea what a psycho-sexual bender is, but when I told my agent I'm coming off a six-month drinking bender, he told me to call it “psycho-sexual” instead. Apparently no one will question a psycho-sexual bender and I can get right back to work. I just do whatever my agent says, honestly, and try not to analyze it too much. But the fact is, Postcards didn’t really light the world (or my wallet) on fire, so I found myself stumbling into a psycho-sexual bender. But, as it turns out, critical acclaim isn’t too shabby, and I'm ready to rejoin Team Comics. San Diego Here I Come and all that good stuff.

Dallas instructed me not to tell anyone about the nomination until the Eisner board made it public. I promised him I’d keep my mouth shut, hung-up the phone, and instantly emailed two groups of people to tell them the news. The first group consisted of the creators who signed on to Postcards from Day One. These folks helped me every step of the way. They were comic guys that I’m proud to have on my side. The second group of people I emailed were some of my fellow D.C.-area comic creators, because those guys were there for me before the Postcards’ crew even knew I existed.

Yes, there are D.C.-area comic creators. We call ourselves the D.C. Conspiracy. We get together once a month, drink heavily, and play a comic book version of Exquisite Corpse. We’ve published some anthologies. You may have even been to one of our parties — for the past three years we’ve hosted the Washington, D.C. Counter Culture Festival.